St Edmund’s Chapel Dover 

Saturday October 26^th 630pm

Peter Sheppard Skærved – Violins

Peter Sheppard Skærved – ‘St Edmunds Chapel – Gaudete cum lætitia’ 2019 (world premiere)

Peter Sheppard Skærved writes: ‘I was first introduced to this amazing building seven years ago, and that first impression remains indelible. St Edmunds was built in and was witness to, turbulent times – the long reign of Henry III. It is the only church in the UK to have been founded by one British saint, in honour of another one. The two Saints. Richard and Edmund. have been in my mind as piece emerged, along with the thought of the ‘kist’ under the altar, where the relics of St Richard were buried, and where, according to a witness,  ‘many favours were granted’. I have re- imagined the earliest surviving musical round with English words, ‘somer is icumen in’, which survives in a manuscript dating from the 1260s, just a decade after the foundation of St Edmunds. The piece is dedicated to the artist Joanna Jones’